A
new film called A Dangerous Idea argues that the
concept of the gene will be looked back on (if humanity
lives long enough) in the way that we look back on claims of
“royal blood” and skull size as justifications for power
and social status. The film makes the case that eugenics and
(its more recent name) genetics has been driven by the same
interests as those past claims.

It’s very strange to me
that the most unequal nation among wealthy nations contains
so many people who are able to claim that inequality is
inevitable and to invent something called “human nature”
that routinely ignores 96% of humanity as somehow not
entering into its definition. It’s refreshing to see a
film that systematically debunks this ridiculous project by
examining history, science, and the history of science. Yet
it’s a bit frustrating to notice that even A Dangerous
Idea does not make use of the existence of the rest of
humanity. One would think that claims that the poor must
always be poor would be handily debunked by the existence of
nations that used to have poverty and inequality and, in
great measure, got rid of those things. Surely it’s harder
work to build your case using only one corner of the earth
and digging back through many decades than it is to mention
other nations. In any case, harder or not, this film does an
excellent job.

Those who have pushed eugenics/genetics
have been, not only plutocrats, but also financial interests
such as lead paint manufacturers defending themselves in
court against those they have harmed. Eugenics, understood
as controlled reproduction, never went away; it just added
“genetic engineering.” But its promises have proven as
empty as its analytical powers, even if its promoters do
seem to believe their own claims to the extent of investing
great resources and energy into researching the “genetic
basis” of “human nature.” It’s turned out that
humans have only about one-fifth as many DNA sequences as
wheat, and 90 percent of them identical to those of mice.
The film debunks the idea of DNA as the determination of
one’s future, and also notes the flaws in studies of
identical twins. I wish that it had also taken the time to
note the flaws in studies of separated identical
twins.

That gene science may be junk science does not, of
course, tell us that nature (as contrasted with nurture)
doesn’t exist. But it does tell us that scientists are
perfectly willing to swindle the public on behalf of
powerful prejudist parties that have no more interest in
pure knowledge for its own sake than does Lockheed
Martin.

Eugenics was quite popular during the previous
gilded age, and was largely imported from the United States
to Nazi Germany. It shaped U.S. immigration policy,
including the refusal to save millions of Jews. Then it
changed its name, but it stuck around. When the Great
Society programs under Lyndon Johnson reduced poverty in the
United States by 40% without altering any genes, this was
not taken as new data to be considered by our scientific
heroes. It was taken as reason to reshape the lies and
defund the programs.

And that’s exactly what Richard
Nixon did, except that he boosted funding for birth control
and sterilization for the poor, resulting in at least
400,000 non-consensual sterilizations. We watch footage of
both President Reagan and President Clinton explicitly
praising the racist nonsense of Charles Murray as grounds
for tearing down welfare — a step that was predicted to
push millions of children into poverty and which did so. And
poverty is now killing large numbers of people in what most
of those people proudly call “the richest nation on
earth,” and which is in fact not the richest but near the
top.

Poor Charlottesville has now made it into quite a
number of films as the location of a fascist rally last
year. This film frames the rise-of-fascism / footage from
Charlottesville ending a bit differently from how some
others have. Here we see these trends as part of a
long-standing aristocratic struggle driven by greed but
propped up by pseudo-scientific myth and mass-cultural
repetition.

If we get rid of the idea that people’s
fates are significantly determined by their biology in some
manner that can be observed and predicted, we’ll have to
abandon the notion that a population of born sociopaths are
dominating us, along with the notion that certain
disadvantaged groups must inevitably suffer and should
therefore be made to suffer (which we could, if we
preferred, abandon just because it makes no sense
whatsoever). But we’ll be left with the fact that how we
treat people from the moment they arrive on this doomed
little blue dot can radically open up possibilities for them
to become better than any of us — much less genetic
scientist Nobel laureates — have ever dreamed
of.

In response to the challenges facing Scoop and the media industry we’ve instituted an Ethical Paywall to keep the news freely available to the public.
People who use Scoop for work need to be licensed through a ScoopPro subscription under this model, they also get access to exclusive news tools.

“The changes mean Inland Revenue will more closely monitor the tax paid by wage and salary earners through the year. If it appears the worker is being over taxed, Inland Revenue will suggest a more suitable PAYE tax code tailored to that worker.” More>>

New Zealand’s Civil Aviation Authority has suspended the operation of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to or from New Zealand. Currently this affects only one operator, Fiji Airways. There are no other airlines that fly this aircraft type to New Zealand. More>>

ALSO:

New Zealand has been rated among the top countries in the world for working women. The Women in Work Index rated New Zealand third in the OECD and it was the only country outside Europe to make the top 10. More>>